There any advantage with a format over Archive & Install?

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I was just wonderen if there was any advantage or reason to go with a reformat over Archive and Install when installing OS X?


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There are advantages, I think, anyway. For one, you get a clean install. Nice and fresh, no other applications to screw things up. Also, you don't have to worry about permission problems, and a bunch of other stuff. This is the method I will use. But I also have Jaguar on it's own partition and all my home stuff on another. So I can format, recreate the symlinks, run the magic bless command, and I should be all set with a fresh install of Panther with all my pref in tact, etc. But this method is still really not a "fresh" install. There will still be stagnant old stuff left in my home stuff, but most likely it won't be an issue.

Maybe not a great answer, but this is how I am gonna do it. :)
 
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emrys lemme know if what i plan to do will work. I have an external hd thats pretty much just files that i will use to backup all my files so i can do a clean install. i just opened up my applications folder and dragged over all the programs that i dont want to have to reinstall. i will drag over the files i want to keep from my home folder.....i will do the clean install tonight and should i just be able to drag back all the program folders and files back into the home folder and be good to go?
 
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Don't know for sure. Depends on how the apps that you have in your /Applications directory install themselves. If they just install into their own directory, and keep everything in there, then you should be ok. If they acutally put stuff in like /Library or /System, I couldn't say. None of that will be there after a fresh install.

The way Apple packages their apps is cool. They create a directory called Mail.app, and everything is inside of that, except for your data, which is under your /Users stuff. Then they actually symlink it or something to name it Mail. They somehow open the app that is a few directories down. It's not a symlink, and I haven't done too much looking, but it is cool, how they are like packages.

Could be plain knowledge to alot of you, and I could be just coming off a really bad Windows trip :)
 
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the only two applications that are large applications with more then just the file itself are photoshop7 and toast6....the rest are just a single icon in the applications folder. i will take a look through the library and see if i see anything that could cause a problem but its not too big of a deal if i have to reinstall all of them
 
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In that case, sacrifce the two installations, and go fresh. I would anyway...
 
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yea it looks like i will just go for a clean install.

the only programs that i was going to be transferring from my firewire drive are

BitTorrent (use it for legal concerts not programsO
BTV Pro Carbon
Photoshop 8
Carbon Shorten 1.1 a4
Fetch 4.0.3
iPoker
Konfabulator
MacStumbler
OnyX
Toast 6
 
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Sounds good to me...
 
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I am waaay used to refornatting on me PC's LOL It's become second nature. But Macs seem so much more stable and less buggy. I think I will reformat when I install Panther though. Get a fresh start.


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Emrys said:
Sounds good to me...

a little update i transferred all of those programs from my firewire onto panther and the only one with a little issues was photoshop and it just gave me an error that some support files are missing but other there than there were no problems
 
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Cool. I did a fresh install, and then symlinked my home directory back. And everything works perfectly, just like I planned :)

Glad to know that yours went relatively flawless as well.

Panther rocks, in case anyone is wondering :)
 
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what does you mean when you say you symlinked your home directory back
 
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trpnmonkey41 said:
what does you mean when you say you symlinked your home directory back

Symlinking is creating a virtual link. Its a unix term. It basically creates a file that points the shell to the correct place.
 
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Symlinking is creating a virtual link. Its a unix term. It basically creates a file that points the shell to the correct place.
Pretty much :)

You can find out more about how I do it at http://bombich.com. They are the makers of Carbon Copy Cloner (which works really good, btw). The info that you are looking for at their site is : HERE. There is tons of other cool stuff there too.
 
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New thread - Question involving Archive and install

To run a proprietary software program I needed a previous operating system. My mac came with 10.5, this software requires 10.4. In using the Archive and Install feature I installed 10.48. The problem is to run office mac 2008 I need 10.49 or better. What I would like to do is return to the 10.5 and then somehow use virtual box to run the 10.4 only with the proprietary software. Not sure how I'm going to get there, but my first problem is in the recovery of 10.5. Based upon my search of reinstalling Mac OS X, Safari help indicates that instructions for this restoration are in the computer manual, but I acquired this machine without a manual (or 10.5 CDs). Any suggestions would be appreciated.
 

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